Thursday, May 29, 2008

I've been listening to Jens Lekman again, which is very inspiring for me. His music is very good, well written, and well produced without sounding over-worked. There really is a sense of childishness in each song, but it's more of a childlike rebellious spirit than just being kiddy and shallow. His voice is very smooth, though I have to admit that his latest album really doesn't show off his range. In concert it was like listening to an angel, it was so clear and bright. I met him after the show and he was a very open guy and very kind.

He's Swedish, though, so I guess that explains why he's so nice. So far I have been very impressed with all the Swedes I have met. Nice folks.

I've listened to "A Postcard to Nina" several times. It really hits me hard because of some personal events in my past, but I can't help but love it. I have this strange sense of love/pain from that song. Ever love someone so much that even when it hurts just to say "Hi" you just have to keep doing it? Unrequited love. Sweet sweet hurtful love.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

I've been running around crazy doing final art projects, plus some other interesting events. I'll be posting picture of the final results here in a few days, probably sometime after Friday.

Even though the school year is over, I'll still be pushing toward graduate school by producing work from home. I think my work will be better this summer without all the deadlines. I like to stress quality over quantity. It's been very difficult for me to push myself creatively with such short times to work on my art.

Thursday, May 22, 2008

I'm depleted. I pulled an all nighter and only got 4 hours of sleep. Soooo... 24 hours awake, 4 asleep, and now class for the rest of the day. I saw Indiana Jones, though. I guess it was worth it.

So as part of the all night work marathon I pasted the boards and cloth backing for most of my book. Altogether I have another few hours of work before it's done. I might finish it tomorrow, but it will certainly be done by the end of this weekend. I have to work very hard, though, to complete my digital art final project.

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

I'm making serious progress on my painting book for my art class, but I'm hitting a major block for digital art. I've been trying to work as much as possible to get as many images as I can produced so I can weed them out before I print them... Arg! I feel lost.

Friday, May 16, 2008

Monday, May 12, 2008

I've been assigned to create a book for class "in collaboration" with another artist, namely deChirico. He was the inspiration for Dali and Magritte, two of my all-time favorite artists. His influence is very clear, especially for Dali, whose landscapes are very empty and melancholy, which is the basic description for deChirico.

I've been interested in making art books for a few years, but I've been too lazy to figure out how to do it and get around to actually making it, but with the way my art seems to be moving away from glass and more towards design, I think it'd be a good avenue to investigate.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

So... I broke down and bought an academically priced copy of Photoshop CS3 (EX). The extended part of it allows me to edit individual frames of MP4 files and such, each just like a photoshop painting file. I already have movie editing software (Final Cut Express), plus some extra painting software, encoding software, and sound editing and production stuff. All-in-all this means... what?

I'm gonna edit some damn movies!

The "Fuddle Duddle"/"Deadly Prey" mashup from before was done with some pretty primitive tools and took forever, but with the stuff I have now it should be much easier and faster with cleaner cuts and sound match-up.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

I've been editing all my photos from China, or at least a large part of them, to intensify whatever aspect of each photo contains the most potent memories. Each photo is treated quickly, because I have 120-300 that I need to edit, so I have to make sure that whatever element I choose to focus on seems relevant, but not so obvious that it damages the entire concept. Eventually I'll be collaging these together to make one larger work.

Most of my art is about perception. I perceive the world through my senses and I’m very limited in my methods of expressing those perceptions to other people. My work is also about memory. I have a very good long term memory, perhaps the best amongst my friends and family, and those memories are very internalized and heavily colored by perception. It’s my belief that memories and their meanings influence our personalities, which then influence our art. Perhaps, though art, we can attempt to access the collective memory of our culture to explain ourselves or our experience.

So, then, what is the collective memory and how do we perceive it? Can we access it? Those questions are something that I think philosophers and scientists are only barely working with. If we have a collective memory I think it’s something very connected to our daily lives, but our experiences and connections to it are ephemeral and subconscious. It flavors our experiences and we feed into it the icons and distilled meanings of our memories just the same as we pull meaning from our instantaneous experiences. For example: my perception of an orange is made of several things: the smell, the color, the feel, the taste, but also the memories I have or orange, which hover around it like a indistinct cloud. Some of those aspects are part of collective memory, such as the taste, smell, and color. We have an overall collective understanding of that, but somehow my memories feed into that collective understanding as well.

A short time ago I started becoming interested in the practice of taking photos and their meaning, as well as the reason or meaning of the act of taking the photo. I think that, with the widespread availability of cameras, our minds have become less sharp and many people rely less on their memory and more on photos. Some people have large collections of photos, so many that they can’t keep them in just one place. Some art snapshots, just quick impressions of a spontaneous moment, and some are more intentional: portraits, landscapes, and still shots. Of these, the most important to me are the snapshots. What moment is being captured, and why? How does a photo capture those moments?

What I find surprising is that, many times, the people who take the photos don’t remember why or where it was taken, though they may have some vague recollections. What purpose, then, do those photos serve? If a photo helps to capture a moment or a memory, but then that memory is lost, does it feed into the collective memory? Does the act of photographing a moment deny the collective memory of meaning?

What I want to do is try to bring meaning and focus back into photos in a way that reinforces my perception of an event, but also informs the viewer, perhaps with the help of perception from the collective memory. It’s my goal to eventually move beyond the photo, however, and begin to evoke those memories and feelings to leave an impression on the viewer without the need for further explanation.

Monday, May 5, 2008

This weekend I decided to buy Photoshop CS3, but I wanted to buy the academic version, which costs a considerable amount less but can't be upgraded to CS4 later. I've seen advertisements for CampusEStore, which is the registered vendor of software for OSU on the internet, so I went to their site.

I looked around for a bit and got the version I wanted, put it in my cart, then went to checkout. When I got to the final screen it said that my software and shipping were free... At first I didn't believe it, so I went around their site a little more to see any discrepancies anywhere else, but I couldn't find any. Everything on their site was listed as 0.00. Giddy as hell and knowing about the laws of false advertising, I went back and got the best version of CS3 I could find (1200 dollar value) put that in my cart and completed my entire order, including school enrollment verification. I got a confirmation email and everything: my end cost is 0.00 and I have all the paperwork to prove it.

I think in a few hours I'll probably get some email apologizing and saying that they cannot honor that price, but I'll fight it as much as I can. If it works out, I got free software, if it doesn't, I'll still buy the regular version because I was planning on that anyway.

UPDATE (5/6/08): They canceled the order! No explaination or anything. Their site was also down all day yesterday after I made my order. Hehehe... I bet they had to send out several hundred cancellations. Sigh. 300 dollars. Is it worth the price to make good art?

Friday, May 2, 2008

Sooooo... I washed my laundry with my room mate's detergent because I haven't bought any of my own and I woke up this morning with hives all over. At first I didn't notice it, but after getting to class I started feeling really itchy, then I noticed little red dots all over my arms.

I had to take some benadryl and now I'm washing everything all over again. I mean everything: towels, sheets, sweatshirts, socks, underwear, washcloths, you name it. So my whole Friday will be dedicated to that. Fun.

In other news: My final project for my digital art class has to be externally displayed images created in photoshop... That fits so well with my previous artwork! I'm really excited to work on it, but I have to start soon. This weekend I am going to try to get someone to take me out to my old apartment to grab all my junk from the studio to begin working on it.

What is Blue Zero?

This is a digest of my progress toward getting into graduate school, my art in and out of school, my daily life, and all the little things in between. I write about art, I read about it, I live it, I create it, I eat it. I digest art.